Star Wars Books: The Best Of The Best Top 10 List

Best Star Wars Books #5 – Revan by Drew Karpyshyn

The Old Republic is all the rage right now when speaking of possible subjects for new Star Wars trilogy films. Revan, consequently, would make an awesome theme. His history and story are very complicated though. If a screenplay were based on this novel, it would take a master story-teller to get it right.

Revan starts us off after the events of the Mandalorian Wars, finding a rehabbed Revan back among the Jedi. His fragmented memory haunts him of his days on the dark side as Darth Revan and the Mass Shadow Generator event. Revan is powerful with the Force. Real powerful. At one point, he goes missing, captured by the Sith, Lord Scourge, and a strange alliance forms between them to bring down the thousand-year-old Sith Emperor, Vitiate. In the end, a Sith is gonna Sith, and Scourge betrays Revan to save his own hide, imprisoning Revan again.

Though this is a good book, the story of Revan before this is vastly more interesting. To get that, you’ll need to dust off the old KOTOR and KOTOR II video games. The backstory is great. Now we just need it in book form…

#4 – Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn

Outbound Flight is Timothy Zahn’s first Star Wars novel within the timeline. The reasons it makes my top-10 list is the foreshadowing juggernaut it is. We get to see Thrawn interact with the Republic, pre-Empire, and it brings a revelation, through the insanity of Jorus C’baoth, the hypocrisy of the Jedi that will eventually lead to the fall of the order.

Jorus is a hard-liner that wants to see the spread of the Jedi order and it’s ideals go further than just Republic space. He launches the Outbound Flight program, a linked armada of six Dreadnought cruisers under a strict Jedi-led command structure. Problems arise almost immediately with that type of authoritarianism and bad things happen. Another bonus is we also get to see the idiocy of the Nemoidians that take on Thrawn’s Chiss fleet, only to get their butts handed to them.

Another first in this book is the idea of the Jedi mind meld. Jorus uses it on the Outbound Flight gunner crews to increase their battle efficiency. Obi Wan Kenobi warns against this awesome and dangerous precedent of abusing Jedi powers. Sadly, he then sees the Jedi use it in common practice in the later New Jedi Order book series. Jorus would appear in later novels, with a belfry-full-of-bats crazy, using Luke Skywalker clones to try and kill the real Luke. Pick this book up for a really good read.